The State Government (Olympia) and Northwest Regional Branch (Bellingham) archives hold some administrative records and correspondence pertaining to the forced sterilizations done from 1921 to 1942 in the three state mental hospitals and two custodial schools for the so-called "feebleminded." Researchers should contact the archivists in advance of visiting to explain what materials you are looking for and how you will use them, because of legal privacy concerns.

Published Primary Sources

Dechmann, Louis. Within the Bud; Procreation of a Healthy, Happy and Beautiful Child of the Desired Sex: A Biological Teaching of Eugenics. Seattle: Washington Printing Co., 1916.

Smith, Stevenson, Madge Wilkinson, and Lovisa Wagoner. A Summary of the Laws of the Several States Governing 1.—Marriage and Divorce of the Feeble-minded, the Epileptic, and the Insane. II.—Asexualization. III.—Institutional Commitment and Discharge of the Feeble-minded and the Epileptic. The Bailey and Babette Gatzert Foundation for Child Welfare. The Bulletin of the University of Washington, no. 82, May 1914.

Secondary Sources

Baynton, Douglas. "Disability and the Justification for Inequality in American History." In Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky, eds., The New Disability History: American Perspectives. New York: New York University Press, 2001.

Black, Edwin. The War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.

Kevles, Daniel. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Kline, Wendy. Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Largent, Mark. Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

Teaching Materials

Lectures

eu-gen-ics (yōō-jěn’ĭks) noun. the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). Origin: 1883, from Greek "well-born."